The Nextbase 402G automatically powers itself on, and indeed off when you switch your ignition on and off (as long as your cigarette lighter is on an ignition live, rather than a permanent live) which means you’ll never forget to switch it on before a journey, and never forget to switch it off after. Everything you need is supplied in the box, there are no extras which are needed to provide key functionality such as GPS, it is all built into the unit.

The provided software allows you to view the videos recorded and provides full speed readout as well as map plotting to show your full journey for that particular video, all on a nice, easy to view map. We tested this out on a variety of roads, and on all but unlit country roads the video was crystal clear and number plates could be read from a good distance – around 10 metres or more. On unlit roads, whilst still visible, number plates were grainy and harder to read.

Installation and set up is a quick and easy process, the camera comes with a 4 metre charging/power cable which means you can route it in a convenient, out of sight location so that only the camera itself is on display. It comes with a strong suction cup mount and can be fitted almost anywhere due to its small size. The only thing we would change from what’s included is the SD card – with the 8GB SD card provided you can expect an hour or so of recorded video before the loop kicks in and begins overwriting. We tested with a 32gb card and were able to record full journeys with no issue whatsoever.

The camera comes equipped with a backup battery, and whilst the runtime of the battery is only a few minutes, it does allow the camera to complete and save a recording in the event of a power failure, whether that be through a crash or simply a flat battery.

Pros

Small, easy to install design

on/off technology and backup battery to ensure you never miss a recording

Quality LED backlit screen for easy video playback/review whilst on the road (in a safe place of course!)

Strong suction mount holder which is easy to fit and remove.

Cons

Small (8Gb) sd card provided which allows for very limited recording time before overwriting previous recording.

Control buttons are small and fiddly – quite hard to see from a distance what button does what

Reading number plates recorded on unlit roads can be tricky, although not impossible

Summary Of The NextBase 402G Pro Dashcam

The Nextbase 402G Pro is good value for money, with a simple yet sleek looking design it’s neither too over the top in its styling, nor too “official” looking – it looks like any other car accessory you might have in your car so blends in well.

The camera uses a F1.6 aperture with Wide Dynamic Range image processing which increases the crispness of the recording – in practice, this works great in daylight, or on lit roads at night, but once the streetlighting is gone and you are relying solely on your car headlights, image quality decreases somewhat and it becomes harder to pick out detail such as car number plates, this can be an important factor if you do a lot of night time driving and would like to use the camera as evidence of an incident.

The GPS and speed readout is useful and can help show an insurance company or the authorities that you were within the law and driving to the conditions of the road should you end up in an accident, but on the flip side it could also incriminate you if you choose to be a little more lax when sticking to the speed limit – something to remember!

The included micro SD card is a little on the small side at only 8Gb, we replaced this with a class 10 32gb card we had from previous tests and found this much more suitable – the recording loop never kicked in during our tests with the 32gb card, but the start of our journey was overwritten when we tested using the 8gb – not too much of an issue if you are purely using this as something to record in the event of an accident, as the collision detection will save the journey immediately before and after a crash, but if you’re looking to post journeys, or track day recordings or similar online, definitely go for a larger SD card.

So – do we recommend the NextBase 402G Pro?

In short – yes, we do. The performance from this little camera is more than we would expect for the price, our only issues are with the unlit night time recording, and the ever so slightly fiddly buttons (we soon got used to which button done what though!)

Fitting was quick and easy, we mounted it slightly to the left of, and behind the rear view mirror (here in the UK) and found that we barely noticed the camera was even there most of the time.